


new

by CiaranthePage



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Candlenights, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22029094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiaranthePage/pseuds/CiaranthePage
Summary: It is long before the abominations grow stronger, long before the final battle. Snow has fallen over Kepler, West Virginia and Amnesty Lodge is decorated for Candlenights. Well, almost decorated. Jake reflects on his new hands. Dani tries to help. Snowball fights can fix anything.(slight spoilers for amnesty finale arc)
Relationships: Jake Coolice & Dani
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	new

**Author's Note:**

> eyyy hello!! this is my entry for a Candlenights Exchange ^u^  
> i decided to go with pre-canon for reasons that made perfect sense at two am but now are just a pleasant surprise  
> hope you enjoy!

“Mama calls it Candlenights,” Dani explained, cutting shapes into a folded paper. “‘Sposed to be a winter holiday conglomeration.”

Jake watched her as she worked, his own paper folded and the scissors still on the table. He was supposed to be helping her make some decorations, but he still wasn’t quite used to his new hands. She’d always had her hands, though, so she worked with ease, turning folded paper into clean-lined snowflakes as if she’d done it every year. They sat in silence for a while, soft piano music drifting over the lobby and the snips of scissors and crinkling of paper filling the space between them. Jake’s gaze wandered, but he inevitably returned to watching her cut little shapes into the papers and unfold them into snowflakes. Dani started talking first, low mumbles and nudges, and, slowly, she convinced Jake to give it a shot. He tried one, two, three...

With a sigh, Jake tossed another messy snowflake into his pile. “I can’t do this,” he said, flopping back against the couch. “I’m not…” he stuck his hands out in front of him, examining his new short fingernails and his distinct lack of soft fur; he’d had hands before, sure, but they’d been webbed, with claws and fur and a comforting sense of connection to his seal body.

“Not used to it?” Dani filled in. She wasn’t looking at him, but she didn’t need to; Jake figured she knew the exact expression on his face.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll get the hang of them,” she patted his shoulder, and she was smiling despite still not looking at him. “But you have to use them.”

Jake folded his hands against his stomach and watched Dani cut the last piece of paper into a snowflake. His gaze was drawn away from where she was shuffling them into a pile to give to Mama, toward and then out the window to the winter outside, so scenic from his comfortable spot in a warm lobby. Except the snow outside called to him, asked him to come sledding, to come play and thrive like he had before… before everything. Before people started going missing. Before he’d gotten lost and gotten in trouble and gotten banished to this planet. Before was a kid stranded with nowhere to go but a lodge that was full of people who shared the same home and not much else with him.

Except for Dani, at least. They weren’t the same kind of being, not by a longshot, but at least she was only a year older than him, instead of most of the other residents, who were adults or almost adults.

The snow outside called to him even louder.

“Hey Dani,” Jake said, turning to her and trying not to slide off the couch. “We should go outside.”

Dani wrinkled her eyebrows, her expression somewhere between displeasure and confusion. “Right now?”

“Yeah.” Jake pushed himself up onto the couch, nearly level with Dani. “We can go… hang up lights?” He was pretty sure he’d seen a coil of lights somewhere around here.

She looked like she was considering it, picking at the side of a nail. Jake wondered if she was going to say no, and he wondered if he would care either way.

“We can just go hang out, if you want,” Dani suggested, shrugging one shoulder. “I think Barclay already hung up the lights.”

Jake must’ve smiled bigger than he thought, because Dani caught it, chuckling mostly in her shoulders as he beamed. He was up and at the door in the time it took Dani to get up and grab her coat off the back of the chair nearby, warmed by the fire. He would’ve done a second lap, too (or prepared at all beyond the sweater he’d pulled on earlier), but she drifted over to him, slipping on her gloves as she walked, and the second the door was open all bets were off. Even Dani’s cool, collected air fell away as Jake dove for the side of the lodge with more snow and she chased him, laughing through chattering teeth as he threw himself across the snow, trying to mimic how he’d slid across the ice back home. Or whatever it was to him, now. A snowy plain where he was born and mostly raised.

(He was half tempted to pull off his new bracelet, live as he had back home, but something told him that if somebody spotted him there’d be trouble no matter _where_ they were from.)

They were washed in the glow of Candlenights lights as the sun started slipping beneath the horizon, all the colors of the rainbow across their faces. Jake scooped up the snow with his bare hands, relishing in the way the cold felt against his skin, familiar and foreign all at the same time, damp and cold and welcome, so welcome; even if this body preferred the heat of a fire, Jake Coolice liked the cold, thank you very much. He packed the snowball and watched it change colors as the lights danced, almost sad he wouldn’t be able to keep this feeling after the snowball left his hands.

Well, it would be worth it.

The snowball flew through the air, connecting with Dani’s back with a satisfying _thump_. Dani yelped, threatening to jump right out of her human disguise. She turned to face him, a twinkle in her eye. There was already snow cradled in one fist, and as she lined up the shot Jake dove, somersaulting behind the lone picnic table still on this side of the lodge. The snowball still found the side of his head, though it skipped off the table and dusted him with powdered snow. Dani was laughing, and Jake was laughing, and a snowball war was inevitable and exhausting all at once.

  
  


There weren't many hiding places, which was fine (they’d come out here to play, after all, not try military strategies) but did result in some misjudged-force shoulder impacts, Jake’s hands feeling like they were going to freeze off, and a bruise that’d probably develop soon after they stopped on the side of Dani’s head. Neither of them would admit it, not in front of Mama or Barclay or any of the other adults, but this was the most fun they’d had in ages; running around in the backyard of a place they’d learn to call home one day, laughing and free of all responsibility, wasn’t something they got to do a lot, as teens on the run from politics and a death toll people had long stopped keeping track of. Here, they could almost forget it all: homes left behind, family hastily mourned, new hands and new appearances just off enough from their natural forms to be unsettling when they looked in the mirror.

Jake made it out with the most landed shots -- which Dani said was an unfair advantage, they’d hardly gotten snow where she lived -- but his hair was also toeing the line between damp and soaking wet from the melting snow and his sweater was never sewn to withstand the sheer amount of sliding and snowball impacts he’d put it through. Dani, bundled up in an actual coat and gloves, only had to worry about the ends of her hair, themselves damp from the shoulder impacts and the one time she’d stumbled and fallen backward into the snow.

“Dani, Jake!”

It was Barclay, standing in the doorway of the lodge and pulling his cardigan shut. He didn’t look upset -- in fact, there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he looked around the corner at them -- but he did motion for them to come inside. “It’s almost time for dinner,” he explained.

For a second, Jake almost resisted going inside. Barclay’s cooking was great, every meal he’d had here was one of the best, but part of him wanted to run, run into the woods, find a river or a lake and fish for himself. But Dani was offering her hand, and without looking at his own Jake accepted her silent offer, walking side by side to head inside.

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jake remembered his older sibling, who’d left for the city long before everything started to crumble, and how much Dani reminded him of them. The rest of his brain shushed it upon smelling a grilled salmon waiting in the kitchen.)

He liked Candlenights, he decided. New hands and all.

**Author's Note:**

> and an official happy candlenights!! 2019 is almost over, 2020 will be better, and i hope that wherever (or whenever) you're reading this, that it gave you some candlenights joy.  
> as per usual, if you wanna chat or ask me questions or see my other work, check me out at [thegempage](https://thegempage.tumblr.com/) on tumblr or [@achillopal](https://twitter.com/achillopal) on twitter!! i hope you have a wonderful [time appropriate word]!!!


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